


Step on a Crack

by JulyStorms



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. It started as a game that the other kids played, too, but the year they all turned nine, Eren was the only one still playing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step on a Crack

**Author's Note:**

> Has anyone written this kinda thing yet? I have so many feelings about the modern 104th that I didn't even know I had.

Eren avoided the cracks in the sidewalk on the way to school.

It started as a game that the other kids played, too, but the year they all turned nine, Eren was the only one still playing it.

On the first day of third grade, Eren stepped carefully around the cracks in his brand-new sneakers; his feet had grown bigger over the summer months, and he had to try extra hard to step between the smaller spaces.

Mikasa never commented on it. She slowed her own pace to walk with him as he teetered on one foot and tried to put the other down in a safe place.

It wasn’t until they were headed home after class that afternoon that Jean approached them. “Step on a crack, Jaeger,” he said, grinning as he purposefully walked down a long, deep crack in the sidewalk in front of them.

“Shut up,” was Eren’s response. His eyes narrowed, but not at Jean; if he looked away from the ground, he could lose his balance.

“You scared?” Jean asked. “You scared that if you step on a crack you’re going to go home and find your mom’s back broke?”

“I ain’t scared,” Eren said, but still did not look up.

Mikasa moved closer, and without looking, Eren knew that the shuffle-slide noise he heard was his friend sliding her fingers under the straps of her backpack, adjusting it idly.

“You _are_ scared,” Jean said, voice sounding awed before he gave an irritating bark of laughter. “You know that’s just a game, right? You know it doesn’t make any sense, right? Are you stupid?”

“You’re the one who failed half the spelling tests last year!” Eren snapped, eyes shifting to his classmate. “So who’s really stupid, huh?”

“ _You_ ,” Jean pointed out, “for thinkin’ that stepping on a crack in the sidewalk is going to actually _do_ anything!”

“I don’t think it’ll do anything!”

“Then why do you avoid them? See? Stupid.”

“I do it ‘cause I want to!”

“Sure you do.”

Eren hated it when Jean managed to sound like a know-it-all. Not that he believed him. Not that he _cared_ what Jean said. He didn’t care—not even a little bit. “I do _so_ ,” he said, and looked down at the sidewalk again. The toes of his new sneakers were turning grey.

“Prove it, then, Jaeger.”

“Prove _what_?”

“That you’re just doin’ it ‘cause you wanna do it, and not ‘cause you’re a chicken.”

Mikasa put a hand on his shoulder—her way of saying he didn’t have to do anything—he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone.

But he did. He did, or Jean would tell everyone that he was scared.

“Fine,” he ground out, and without looking down at the ground, because he wasn’t sure that he could stand to see it, he stared at Jean as he stomped down hard on the wide crack in the sidewalk—the one Jean himself was standing on a few feet away as it snaked down toward the street.

Jean was silent for a long moment.

“Wow, Jaeger,” he said, looking so smug that Eren found himself wanting to punch the other boy. “I didn’t think you had it in you—”

“Well, I _do_ ,” Eren countered as Jean continued with:

“—to actually try and hurt your mom, I mean. What _have_ you done? You know when someone breaks their back it kills them, right?”

“Shut up!” Eren almost shouted. “I didn’t do—it doesn’t _mean_ anything!”

Jean shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t.”

Jean left after that, left grinning and whistling like the jerk he was. Mikasa took Eren’s hand and squeezed it.

“Don’t listen to _him_ ,” she said. “He doesn’t know anything. It’s your neck that kills you if you break it, anyway—not your back.”

“Yeah.” And then, a moment later, as Eren squeezed her hand back, he said, “ _Yeah_.”

He continued to look down at the sidewalk, though, and hopped over the big cracks as he completely avoided the small spidery ones.

And after Mikasa walked up the steps into her own house, Eren ran across the neighborhood yards, leaping over the cracks in people’s driveways until he got to his own house, out of breath, his white shoes stained vaguely green.

“Mom?” he called as he stepped into the house, heart pounding in his throat, blood rushing through his ears like water hitting the bottom of a large, empty bathtub. The house was quiet. “Mom?”

And when Eren walked into the kitchen and saw his mom—saw her in her familiar dirty apron, the pale yellow one she loved with the cows on it—

When he saw her standing there by the stove, a tray of fresh cookies still steaming in the grip of their ugly blue potholder—

When she pulled out a chair and poured him a glass of milk and said, as she sat a cookie in front of him and tugged on his ear, “You left your room looking like a disaster zone this morning, young man—“

He burst into tears.


End file.
